A Part of Me
by musosteph
Summary: Spike returns to Dawn several years after the battle against the First.


Years later, he turned up on my doorstep. I hardly recognised him, with his hair unbleached and falling into his face, his eyes lacking their usual glint - and a heartbeat.  
  
As I opened the door, he just smiled sadly, a shadow of his former sardonic grin, quietly said, "Hello, nibblet," and collapsed at my feet.  
  
* * *  
  
I nursed him for several weeks, until he became a permanent fixture in my apartment and my days felt as if they had always revolved around his care. Occasionally he'd to talk to me or rouse himself from his continual light doze to smile his sad smile and clasp my hand for a long moment. And slowly, piece by piece, I learnt of the happening that had brought him to me.  
  
After the First had been defeated and Sunnydale's Hellmouth closed for good, the Scooby Gang had gone its separate ways. Leaving Faith to hold the fort in the USA, Buffy and Willow had returned to England with Giles to establish a new Council of Watchers and I knew from my visits between college semesters that each of them had found their own niche. Giles made for an impressively modern replacement for Quentin Travers, Willow had furthered her studies at Oxford University and was now an esteemed professor in her own right, and then there was Buffy.  
  
I don't think Buffy ever forgave herself for not choosing me when things got really bad with the First. With my warning from Mom, the blow was softened slightly for me and the shock not as great as it could have been. Buffy's sense of betrayal cut her deeper than it cut me, and even all these years later there is a strain on our relationship stemming form that time. But she is all the family I have left in this world and nothing could stop me loving her or her loving me. There are just moments, occasionally, when I'll catch her watching me and I'll see in her eyes that she is berating herself again, that she is remembering the pain she caused by being true to her calling. Perhaps, then, I should feel bitter that it is her work that keeps her on the other side of the Atlantic, but I've seen the purpose and direction she has now, training the European slayers, and I wouldn't have her lose that.  
  
So that leaves Anya with me in California, living in a small house halfway to nowhere with her daughter, Alexi. The steam kinda went out of Anya without Xander around, and she turned her energies to keeping his spirit alive in Alexi. Motherhood has mellowed her, and although she's still passionate about capitalism and is fiercely competitive as a financial consultant, she has a serenity about her that was never there in the old days.  
  
Spike had not stayed around long after Buffy left the country. Many things were left unsaid between them - deliberately, I think, on Buffy's part, knowing that a proper relationship with Spike would keep her from her purpose and blur the edges of her perspective. It left Spike rather lost, adrift without his anchor. His origins eventually called to him and he joined Angel in Los Angeles, continuing the good fight as if it was the only thing left to him. But not long before his return to me, the End of Days had finally come, that apocalypse foretold to end all apocalypses. And the foretelling involved Angel's prophecy; fulfilled now, I might add. Somehow it seems less unusual that he too is somewhere out there, alive, and (as Spike tells it) playing dysfunctional families with Cordelia and Connor. Of the rest of the Angel Investigations team, Gunn was killed and Wesley vanished completely, but Fred returned home to her parents in Texas.  
  
"But that was months ago," I put in, sounding for a second like the whiney teenager I had been the first time we met.  
  
"Patience, pet," he said softly, from his couch across the living room. "It took me all this time to get to you; I'm not leaving in a hurry."  
  
"It took three months to get here from Los Angeles? What, did you walk all the way?" I asked jokingly.  
  
"Pretty much," came the sobering reply. "Look, it wasn't the best of times for me -"  
  
"I do want you to tell me," I interrupted, forestalling what he had been about to say.  
  
"You do, do you?" His tone became slightly challenging. "You want to know that I spent the first month a complete nutter again, just like when I first got me soul back? That I was weak and defenceless and an easy target for petty crime? I've been attacked more times than I care to remember and each time it took longer and longer to heal. I've slept on the side of the freeway; I've hidden in abandoned buildings and eaten less than a starving child in a third world country. I've spent three months relearning how miserable life is as a human being, and I still don't get it."  
  
"Don't get what?" I whispered into the silence after his outburst.  
  
"I don't get why," he said, sounding deflated. "Why I'm human, why I deserved the second chance I never wanted, never earned. I'm not another Angel," he went on, desperately, "I never gave a fig about redemption, I never worked towards an ultimate reward. Everything I ever did was for her."  
  
"Buffy," I said softly.  
  
"And now what do I have to live for?" he went on, his voice breaking. "I can't hope to push my way back into Buffy's life. There's nothing left to fight for and I'm not needed anywhere. I've lost my place." Spike turned away from me, hiding a face contorted in sorrow.  
  
I came over and crouched down beside him, taking a hand in mine.  
  
"Stay here then, Spike," I offered. "Stay with me and learn to live again. And I won't take no for an answer," I added firmly, pulling him into a hug as he began to sob quietly.  
  
* * *  
  
Little by little, we put Spike's life back together. And little by little, he became less miserable to be human again. We had setbacks, of course; something might throw him off course or stop progress for a while. On one such occasion, I came home after a late movie with friends. All the lights in the apartment were off, so I tiptoed through the living room and down the passage to my bedroom. Once in my pyjamas, I'd gone to brush my teeth but as I put my hand on the bathroom light switch, a voice came out of the dark room in front of me.  
  
"Might not want to do that, pet."  
  
I shrieked indignantly. "Spike! What are you doing?"  
  
I turned the light on in the hallway and could make out Spike's silhouette in the gloom.  
  
"Taking a bath, I think."  
  
Something in his tone caught my anger and turned it to concern. I sat down cautiously on the floor beside the tub.  
  
"What happened, Spike?"  
  
He sighed and the water rippled as he moved in the bath.  
  
"There was a crazy drunk on the bus this afternoon and it reminded me of me. Not as a drunk but decidedly crazy. And it unsettled me how much she scared me. I was actually scared, Dawn!" His voice was rising. "Scared of a human probably too drunk to aim a punch straight!"  
  
"I would have been scared," I said lightly.  
  
"Yes, but I used to be the scourge of Europe."  
  
"And I'm the sister of the Slayer," I replied calmly. "I was the Key to open the barriers between dimensions and unleash hell on earth. Now I'm just human, like you."  
  
In the space after my words a wet hand clumsily felt for my face in the dark and cupped my cheek.  
  
"When did you get so wise?" he said, wonderingly.  
  
"Since forever!" I laughed, turning to kiss his hand and slip off to bed.  
  
* * *  
  
After that we started to go out to places. I wanted to show Spike the world in daylight and he was carried along mainly by my enthusiasm at first. He grew to love the beach most of all - we'd sit for hours with our feet buried in the sand, talking and watching families with their young children enjoying the summer. I got to know a side of Spike I'd only caught glimpses of previously, and he fast became my closest friend and I his greatest ally in a confusing world.  
  
As the weeks passed, Spike kept making progress: going out by himself while I had classes, taking responsibility for helping out around the apartment, and looking after me in his own way.  
  
One evening in October I arrived home, wet and dishevelled and worn out by a hard day of mid term exams, to find Spike in the kitchen.  
  
"Spike?" I called from the door.  
  
There was a startled crash and a not-so-quiet "Bollocks!" from Spike, who came into the living room, sucking a burnt finger.  
  
"You're cooking me dinner?" I asked incredulously.  
  
"Thought you deserved it, love," he replied, helping me out of my coat. "Go have a hot bath while I finish up and then we'll celebrate." He pushed me gently in the direction of the hall.  
  
An hour or so later, I pushed my plate away and leaned back in my chair with a sigh. Spike grinned as he began to clear the table.  
  
"Glad to see you enjoyed yourself, pet," he called over his shoulder, on his way to the kitchen.  
  
"That was incredible, Spike. Hey, you shouldn't clean up as well as cook," I added when he came back for a second load.  
  
"It's my pleasure," he replied. I raised an eyebrow. "What? I was last alive in the age of chivalry, what do you expect?"  
  
I left him to it, content to watch him move around the apartment. He looked right, somehow, like he was supposed to be there, a part of my home and my life.  
  
I said as much to him when the dishes were finally done and we were watching the night lights in the city below. His reply was to wrap his arms around me and rest his cheek against my hair. I wriggled around to look up at him.  
  
"You never did tell me what we were celebrating."  
  
He gazed out of the window for a long moment before replying.  
  
"I've been offered a job in that second-hand book store I've haunted for the past month."  
  
"Congratulations," I began, stopping as he went on hurriedly.  
  
"It wasn't really that, or the end of your exams, even. It was this," he said, holding me closer. "This. Us. Having a life again and appreciating it because of you. Everything you did for me, Dawn, you don't know what a difference it made. You gave me back my purpose, my place."  
  
"What will you do now you've found them again?" I asked, unable to keep the anxiety at losing Spike out of my voice.  
  
"What would you have me do?" He was watching my face closely, his eyes bright with emotion.  
  
"Stay," I whispered, just as I had done when he arrived. And as I kissed him softly, I knew for certain that this new part of my life was not one I was letting go of in a hurry.  
  
Finis. 


End file.
